Saturday Night Live is a comedic Ship of Theseus, the creaky components of which are continually being replaced as it sails along. It’s no longer the same ship it was ten, 20, or 40 years ago, even if it still bears that ship’s name and Kenan Thompson’s been onboard the entire time. Whether it’s better in some ways or worse in others, the ship is always changing. Sometimes this evolution is so gradual that viewers barely notice it’s happening, and other times the ship gets completely refurbished in real time, before our very eyes, like the Acheron in Master and Commander. (No more maritime metaphors from here on out, I promise.)
But is SNL actually being repaired in its 48th season, or destroyed? It’s all in the eye of the beholder, although in the second scenario the beholder would be wrong. As much of a bummer as it is to see Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney, Kate McKinnon, and several other celebrated cast members sail off into the sunset exit the show, it’s important to remember how unfamiliar and unproven they all were to most viewers upon arriving — and to cut the show some slack as it tries to figure out what it is now without them.
If it wasn’t clear from Lorne Michaels’s recent New York Times interview that the show is fully aware of the wariness around its latest incarnation, the season kicked off with perhaps the most self-aware sketch in modern SNL history.
Using the NFL framework of the Manningcast, the cold open channels the peanut-gallery spirit of second-screen viewers tweeting about the show from home. As the Manning brothers watch a fake SNL sketch, they address just about every concern the audience may have about what they’re watching. It’s kind of a cross between Statler and Waldorf’s heckling on The Muppets, and Eminem’s B-Rabbit pre-empting all of Papa Doc’s insults about him in the final battle of 8 Mile.
“Let’s see what they spent the entire summer coming up with,†Peyton Manning (host Miles Teller) says up top, an expectation-deflating wink at the idea that this episode wasn’t thrown together over the course of one stressful week like every other episode.
This sketch handily sets up many metanarratives lurking within this “rebuilding year,†some of which are addressed within the episode. Will Bowen Yang’s airtime reflect his rising profile this year? (Probably, as the two-time Emmy nominee plays himself later on in a game-show sketch.) Will the new cast members’ intentionally perfunctory introduction be all we see of them in the episode, and is that how it will go for them all season? (Not in the case of Michael Longfellow, at least, as he later gets the spotlight of a decent desk piece on “Weekend Update.â€) In the absence of Kate McKinnon’s Fauci and Giuliani, will all the new impressions be ones “nobody asked for,†like Heidi Gardner’s Governor Kristi Noem? (The chameleonic James Austin Johnson debuts a masterful Mitch McConnell later in the episode.) Will the political humor be balanced, or will it just consist of the same old Trump jokes? (Joe Biden gets roasted later in the episode, in sort of the same way he’s been getting roasted on the show consistently for the last two years, even if not everybody has noticed.)
The only problem with this bold opening gambit, though, is that the sketch-within-the-sketch is supposed to be bad on purpose, even though it’s funnier in its badness than some of the actual sketches that pop up later on — namely “Charmin Bears,†“Rooftop Bar,†and “Caribbean Queens,†all of which felt undercooked almost to the point of parody.
Fortunately, plenty of bright spots elsewhere in the episode put up stronger numbers than the “14 attempted jokes, one mild laugh, and three chuckles†the Manning brothers noted in the opener.
Send Something Normal
The most topical sketch of the night was inspired by Adam Levine’s recent sexting scandal, which launched a bunch of memes over the last week and a half. The writers do a nice job evoking the cringe factor of male celebrities responding to DMs from adoring female fans, and in the case of Armie Hammer, the abject horror. You almost have to feel bad for Levine that the drama of his extramarital sexting is practically a footnote in the far more entertaining story of how criminally poor he is at doing so. Almost.
BeReal
There is some truth to the opening sketch’s idea of this episode being the culmination of an entire summer, in that the writers have all the summer’s events, moments, and trends to mine for material, even if they weren’t working on that material the entire time. Although the anti-Instagram app BeReal was already gaining steam earlier in the year, it didn’t seem to fully take off beyond the 17-year-old circuit until summer. SNL’s sketch about the phenomenon of it feels timely, even as it arrives just when the excitement around the app has cooled down. It perfectly captures all the fuss BeRealers make when the alert goes off while they’re hanging out with friends who’ve never heard of it. In a frantic burst, they have to explain what the app is, why they love it, and why everyone present should pose for a photo right now, all with a ticking two-minute clock ushering things along. Unless you’ve been socializing under a rock all summer, you likely have had at least one friend who is exactly as evangelical as everyone in this sketch.
Nicole Kidman AMC Ad
While the above sketches are well-timed, it’s unclear why the SNL team waited until over a year after the iconically bonkers Nicole Kidman ad for AMC premiered to parody it. Better late than never, though, since Chloe Fineman slays as Kidman and the sketch seems to be mocking the ongoing fascination with the ad as much as it mocks the ad itself. All those people mindlessly parroting the immortal phrase “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this†sort of recreates the experience of being on Twitter at various points in the past year.
Grimace
It would be hard to make an SNL sketch about the McDonaldland characters that isn’t at least a little funny. Miles Teller is hilarious, though, as he portrays Grimace on a journey of self-discovery. Sure, a big part of it is the excellent costume design of a yoked, newly divorced Grimace, and another big part of it is the booming voice he uses. But Teller also brings a certain energy to this introspective Grimace that might have fallen flat in less skilled hands. He elevated the material so that the sketch wasn’t merely a joke about Grimace coming out as bi, but a joke about Grimace finding himself as a person — or whatever it is that Grimace is.
In any case, this episode was not exactly a total knockout, but as Jon Hamm says in the cold open, “I’m gonna stick around and see what the hell this show is gonna be.â€
Hopefully, you will too.